


The darkness fades

by uumuu



Series: In your dream [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Halls of Mandos, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 21:05:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7122550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Halls, Fingolfin finds Míriel instead of Fëanor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The darkness fades

Traversing the Halls meant gliding through echoes of life churning together in utmost dullness – the stale leaden air of a sealed room, the ceaseless prickling of a mind forsaken by sleep. He wasn't slowed down by them. He sought his brother, and kept scouring every corner of the castle even as it seemed he wouldn't find him anywhere, not at all willing to accept that his brother might not want to be found by him. He hounded a shapeless phantom, and it was thus that he happened upon a spot where gloom faded to a soft woolly haziness and the distinct humming of a woman's voice reached him like a sweet breeze. Waves of sound drew a frontier in the bowels of the Halls, and he stepped right through it. It wasn't like dying. It wasn't choking and tumbling down and finding oneself adrift. But he did trespass, walking as it were through an invisible wall.

He turned to look back, and gloom had disappeared – or rather was hidden away.

The murkiness and haziness wore away to reveal a woman sitting at a huge loom in a brightly lit meadow. She was garbed in sumptuous robes whose decorations blended with the flowers grass and bare rock around her seat. Thread seemed to feed from the hem of her overcoat directly into the tapestry she was weaving. Her silver hair was draped all around her, loose except for a bright red ornament which drew some of it up above her forehead. Long slender fingers tugged and glided threads around the weft and warp of the loom with supreme deftness. The movement produced a faint plucking sound that echoed her singing. 

He listened. The song was melancholy, haunting, yet soothing, like a promise of revivification, tenderly beckoning. He moved forward again without willing it, and flowers crumpled loudly with each of his steps.

The song faltered, quivered to a halt and dissipated. The woman stole a curious glance at him, but waited until he stood almost next to her to speak. 

“Well met,” she said. Her voice was soft, her speech sluggish, drowsy.

He didn't reply, turning in all directions to look at the meadow from the centre of it. It didn't look like something that could be part of the Halls of the Dead. There was a lightness to it, air he could breathe through swelling lungs and solid ground to tread.

“This is a...most beautiful place.”

“So it is,” Míriel replied and pulled her fingers away from the loom, letting the threads rest. Fingolfin couldn't tell whether they truly departed from her overcoat or not. His eyes blurred if he tried to make out where her dress ended and the meadow began, and his gaze drifted up to her profile when she spoke again. “I believe it is his dream.” Her mouth moved as if to add more, but she closed it instead and raised her head. “You have found your way here because you seek him, do you not?” 

At Fingolfin's silent avowal, she lowered her arms, revealing a ball of flame nestling at her bosom. Its bright orange and yellow frayed at the top, and one of the tattered tails twisted and thinned until it became a thread that linked the flame to Míriel's chest.

“That is he?”

“Oh no.” Míriel smiled. “Fëanáro...he isn't truly here. I'm keeping a place for him.”

“ _Where_ is he?”

Míriel sighed. She turned on the chair until she faced him. Her movements were as slow as her speech. She took one more deep breath and stood up. Her hair fell all around her like a heavy curtain, and her overcoat barely crinkled, stiff as if made out of stone. It seemed impossible that she could move at all.

“Come, let us sit under that tree,” she said and started walking towards the opposite end of the meadow, taking step after ponderous step with her overcoat trailing behind her in a stream of colour.

The tree was a large flowering tree, its branches reaching up snow-white: a definite shape of life, prosperity, and peace, so very unlike Fingolfin's last memories, the barrenness of the wind-swept hills of Mithrim, the scorched, still smoke-swathed plains in front of Angband.

Míriel walked up to the tree-trunk and plopped down among white flowers, herself looking then like a bizarre tree sprouting up from the ground silver-topped.

“He is looking for an exit,” she said once Fingolfin had settled down next to her, putting a respectful distance between them, though not only out of respect. 

“From the Castle?” he asked.

“Yes...and no,” Míriel drawled, but withdrew any further explanation.

Fingolfin waited in vain for a while, then leaned forward and stretched out his hand to touch the leaping fire.

Míriel swatted his hand away, curling her other arm around the flame. 

Fingolfin looked up, offended by her protectiveness, and met Míriel's eyes for the first time. Narrow, shrewd eyes, the pupils almost utterly black, and seemingly faceted like a gem. Jewel-eyes. The eyes of the woman whose death had made him who he was. He peered into them, but couldn't tell whether she were actually looking back at him. In some uncanny way it was like looking into a fragment of the night sky itself. 

And then – “You forsook your struggle,” her voice broke into his scrutiny, startling him as if he had been immersed in it for a long long time. 

There was no reproach in her still-pleasant tone. The statement itself stung.

“What is your purpose now?” she pressed. “You embraced death. Do you wish to rest? Or...do you regret your choice?”

“Regret?” The very circumstances of their encounter were wrong. He tried to think of other circumstances under which Míriel and he might have met, but found none. Míriel and he should _never_ have met. “You...have a body.”

Míriel's lips thinned in what might have been a smile. “I do.” 

“How –” 

“My choice...to remain here, it wasn't truly a choice. It was a decision I would never have wanted to make.” Míriel's eyes narrowed even more and shifted to the white flowers surrounding them, in a way suggestive of disdain. “This is a new chance, born out of sorrow. You too have a body, here, for now.”

She turned her head again and gazed at him. This time Fingolfin was sure she was looking straight at him, searching him.

“It is a most singular thing indeed,” she muttered, raising her arms towards his face. “that you should come to me, you who look so alike to your father.”

Her hands cradled his cheeks, pressing to feel the shape of his face.

“Where is Father?” Fingolfin asked, shivering. Míriel's touch was ice-cold, and reminded him of the Helcaraxë. He thought of his own mother, her warm soothing embraces, wondered if he would ever see her again. For a moment, he hated the very fact that Míriel was sitting next to him, that she was touching him, that she was speaking to him so calmly when nothing made sense. “Is he with Fëanáro?”

“No.” Míriel pulled her hands away, her fingertips dragging ticklishly over his skin. “He tarries in the Halls, but removed from the others, unseen.”

Fingolfin sighed in relief that Míriel had stopped touching him.

“Why?”

“He does what he can to aid Fëanáro,” Míriel said. “It is perilous to wander in dreams in death. The fëa might get lost in them.”

“Is there a way to reach Fëanáro there?”

“I talk to him, from time to time. You could attempt to, too.”

He shook his head. “I want –...I need to meet him.”

“You could join him,” Míriel suggested. “I would keep a place for you too...for the love I once bore your father.”

Her voice lingered on 'once' and 'your', almost challenging him to disprove the validity of those words. Memories marched before Fingolfin, as clear-cut as the tree looming over him. Running through palace corridors as a child while his father tried to catch up with him in a trail of laughter, then skirting dead bodies on the bloodied quays of Alqualondë to find Fëanáro, a witty, cosy conversation Fëanáro and he had once had after a council, both bored out of their minds, and their last altercation in the desolation of Araman. His hand curled up, grabbing a fistful of flowers. 

“I will go.”

Míriel inclined her head solemnly, yet there was a glimmer in her eyes. She stood up, and when she remained towering over him without speaking a word, Fingolfin felt obliged to do the same. Míriel took one and two steps forwards, coming to stand mere inches from him.

“May you find what you seek,” she said and, laying her palm flat on his chest, pushed him with surprising force for someone of her stature.

Fingolfin reeled, tipped back, and fell, splashing heavily into an unseen pool. Specks of sky-blue danced in his vision, white flower petals floated all around him, and black water closed up over him, swallowing him. 

Back on her seat, Míriel gathered all the threads that had come undone when she had moved away from the tapestry. “My Fiery One,” she lowered her head towards the flame, which had now taken on a darker tint. “Do not begrudge his coming. He will be of help.”

She gave a satisfied smile and resumed her singing as she started re-tying all that had come loose.


End file.
